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Subdomain blog vs. subfolder blog in 2013.

Having read this ( http://www.seomoz.org/q/blog-on-a-subdomain-vs-subfolder ) & countless of blog posts on never to put your blog on a domain because a subdomain is treated as a different site & your blog traffic won't help with your main sites authority. I've always pushed for subfolder blogs.

However I've been seeing a lot of blogs now and days saying that Google is now treating subdomains as the same site as your main site.

2 Responses

In my experience, Google still treats subdomains as separate sites in many respects (I work for a large ecommerce site with 30 different subdomains). It's also how large webhosts like wordpress.com & tumblr.com can get away with having so many people creating poor content without being penalized-- each subdomain is treated as a separate site.

If you want your site to get SEO benefit from your blog (and vice versa), I would stick to subdirectories. Why take the chance on a subdomain? They certainly don't provide any benefits above and beyond a subdirectory.

Have to agree with Takeshi. In my experience, even still in 2013, having a blog on a subdomain gives you all of the disadvantages of it being a separate site while achieving none of the advantages.

If the blog's topics are directly related to the primary topics of the website itself, put it in a subdirectory - save yourself all kinds of hassle while letting your main site authority help your blog, and vice versa.

Paul

[Updated to note: those two articles you mention are referring to very specific elements of subdomains and subdirectories. Namely that geo-targeting is equally effective whether you're using a subdomain or subdirectory, that specifically within Webmaster Tools, links between subdomains and primary domains will be considered internal for reporting purposes, and that subdomains are no longer considered "seperate" sites when it comes to trying to get your site/subdomain to show multiple times in a SERP.. These should in no way be considered general claims that subdomains and subdirectories perform similarly in all other aspects]

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